A July Holiday in Saxony, Bohemia, and Silesia. Walter White
even a short-winded patient may ascend, while those with strong legs may shorten the distance by the steep cut-offs. An agreeable surprise awaits you at the top: a large, well-kept garden, gay and fragrant with flowers, surrounded by arbours of clipped fir, and a graceful screen of trees, while at one side stands a spacious Restauration—all clean and cheerful of aspect. From an elevated platform, or from the arched recesses on the terrace in front of the garden, you see all Carlsbad and the hilly region around.
Now you see how singularly crooked is the narrow valley in which the town is built; how the white houses gleam from the steep green sides of the farther hills, and straggle away to the wooded hollow at the head of the valley, from whence the river issues in a shining curve. In and out flows the stream past the church, past the springs and public buildings, cutting the town in two, on its way to fall into the Eger. Your eye takes in the life of the streets, the goings to and fro, but on a reduced scale—such tiny men and women, and little carriages! 'Tis as if one were looking into Lilliput. Opposite rises the precipitous rocky hill, the Hirschsprung, to the craggy summit of which we shall climb by-and-by; and beyond it, ridgy summits, away to the gloomy expanse of the Schlaggenwald. Many are the paths that penetrate the rearward valleys, and white roads curving along the hill-sides high above Carlsbad, and far up the distant slopes. Altogether the view is striking, and somewhat romantic; yet in the eyes of the Germans fresh from their flat, uninteresting country, it is "wunderschön"—an epithet which they never tire of heaping on the landscape.
From the garden a path leads along the ridge to a higher elevation, where the three tall crosses, seen for miles around, spring from a rocky knoll at the rear of a small semicircular opening, enclosed by firs, prettily intermingled with beech and birch. Heath and yellow broom grow from crevices in the rocks, and the wild thyme, crushed by your foot, fills the air with aromatic sweetness, for the spot is left to the nurture of the winds and the rain. It commands the same view as from the garden; but with a wider scope, and the town lying at a greater depth.
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